The New Heads – BNP Paribas Foundation Art Awards come and go and each event is different, resulting from a clear-cut commitment that was made with the very first New Heads awards ceremony and that makes it so unique. The idea was to invite a different curator every year to select young artists, graduates of the MA in Visual Arts at HEAD – Genève and to design an exhibition of their works.

The guest curators for the five previous awards have shaped the history of the New Heads. Within the constraints imposed – selecting a limited number of graduates, respecting the plurality of artistic practices and approaches, mounting two exhibitions in clearly different contexts, i.e. a school gallery and an art fair booth – the various curators all opted for an additional one, namely to carry out a curatorial project that would stand on its own. This ambition of mounting an exhibition while highlighting the plurality of approaches is a great challenge and underpins the New Heads’ unique stance of moving away from traditional award ceremony exhibition formats, instead focusing on a more comprehensive intellectual endeavour, as much for the artists who are involved as for the viewers. The curator for this 6th exhibition, Balthazar Lovay, Director at Fri-Art, Kunsthalle Fribourg, opted to keep this demanding approach, inviting the graduates he selected to work together on the shape of their own exhibition. This generous approach is a unique opportunity for these artists, driving them to reflect more broadly on the presentation environment, the experimental aspect of the project, the self-sufficiency of their work and their responsibility for a joint narrative.

The 12 artists featured in Proxy Paradise decided to do an experiment, i.e. to try to put issues of competition and rivalry aside and to collaborate within the exhibition rather than compete – each according to their own rules, giving themselves the freedom to assert their various practices, whether individual, collective or anonymous. The title of the exhibition epitomises this complexity: In computer language, a proxy server serves as an intermediary between various users and servers while preserving mutual anonymity. It operates as a transmitter. However the artistic proposals materialise, they act as vectors of meaning in the world, like smart proxies programmed to act and speak in the name of the artists. Meaning creeps through these interfaces, i.e. the artworks, a catalogue, a speech, a logo, a text, the cover of a book, an appearance, a stance. Thus, the artists address the context of the exhibition while presenting the most recent expression of their research and the development of their own language.

In the context of a competition, the notion of author is fundamental. Several artists address it, with strategies that deflect their own individuality as artists through permutations of identity and collaboration. Tayeb Kendouci disappears behind Service de Presse, an advertising agency that retails advertising spaces within the exhibition where company employee Kendouci Tayeb has been dispatched. Presenting a twist on the self-portrait genre, Anaïs Wenger shows a photo portrait taken a few years ago by Aurélien Martin and appoints her artist/friend to introduce the picture to the juries for her. Diego de Atucha becomes Hope Free, a fictional entity who delegates the production of drawings to third parties. Raphaëlle Müller introduces herself as a duo in the company of Vanessa Lorenzo, a researcher and artist active in the field of biohacking, while Hugo Hemmi spent a week in residency on the premises of BNP Paribas to conduct a tea ceremony that brought together the bank’s staff, choosing to present the most intense moment in his artistic process ahead of the exhibition, which features documentation of this event.

Brieg Huon displays a model of the art gallery LiveInYourHead which serves as a recipient for the nibbles at the opening, thereby addressing the essence of the place. In a parallel perspective, Baker Wardlaw presents stickers that read “Welcome” in several languages, as can be seen in some airports, thereby pushing to its paroxysm the obsequiousness of globalised capitalism.

Carisa Mitchell performs three pieces in which she reads from very long banners sentences that seem commonplace, but whose endless repetition reveals the sordid nature and vacuity of our daily life.

Charlotte Schaer deconstructs a short philosophical text on libraries by applying the Dewey Decimal Classification System, which is used in most libraries. She develops a complex decoding and re-encoding system that enables her to build a collection of books, which is then displayed in the exhibition. This new body of work acts as a codified translation of the initial text.

The dreamlike sculptures of Marie Bette expand her research on materials and tensions between three-dimensional objects and representational painting. These play opposite Sarah Sandler’s own objects which address the memory of sculptural shapes in view of another story, that of the representation of female internal organs. These artefacts fall within stories steeped in ancestral agriculture, colonialism and gender relations. Finally, Yannis Christ’s sculptures made from Corian and his poems introduce the metaphor of the labyrinth in more inner questions.

The book that accompanies the Prize is also the result of a collective process and the expression of a proxy: A fanzine, which includes the free contributions of each participant, is inserted in a sleeve that recaptures the codes of institutional communication.

The New Heads – BNP Paribas Foundation Art Awards project, driven by BNP Paribas Swiss Foundation, is dedicated to supporting Visual Arts graduates from HEAD – Genève. Two grants worth CHF 12,000 reward two artists. One is chosen by a jury of professionals, while the other is selected by Switzerland’s BNP Paribas staff. Swiss newspaper Le Temps, which is also a partner in this event, makes available to its subscribers a limited edition reproduction of the works of one of the artists on show.

The works of the artists selected are also displayed during the artgenève art fair from 1 to 4 February.
 

LiveInYourHead
Général-Dufour Building
Rue de Hesse 5
1204 Genève
Opening Thursday 18 January 2018 from 18:00
Award ceremony at 19:00
Exhibition from 19 January to 9 February 2018

Artgenève
address
Exhibition from 1 to 4 February 2018
Opening Wednesday 31 January 2018 (upon invitation)

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The exhibition will open during HEAD Open Doors
Friday, 19 January 2018, 2:30pm–7pm
Saturday, 20 January 2018, 10am–6pm

Bachelor and Master WM, Trans, CCC in Fine Arts presentation at
New Campus HEAD, av. Châtelaine 7
Friday 2:30pm
Saturday 10:30am